Which USB 2.0 Is the Fastest? Three USB 2.0 Chips Review. Page 6

USB 2.0 interface has become in inalienable part of the users’ life. But what USB 2.0 chip ensures the maximum performance? We are going to answer this question today. We will take a look at the three most widely spread USB 2.0 solutions: two PCI adapters on NEC and VIA chips and the USB 2.0 controller integrated into Intel’s ICH5 South Bridge.

WinBench99

The classical Ziff Davis test once again demonstrates the superiority of the integrated USB 2.0 bus, although the advantage is not so evident this time. Business Disk WinMark results of ICH5 are not the best ones, as NEC7200100AGM manages to outperform the almost eternal leader here. However, in High-End Disk WinMark everything returns to its usual course, and ICH5 resumes its leadership. VIA VT6202 controller again lags behind the rivals.

Conclusion

Well, you may go farther and fare worse. This is exactly what the whole USB 2.0 controller test session points at. The USB 2.0 bus integrated into the chipset South Bridge appears the fastest, according to our tests. This way, if you are getting an Intel based mainboard, you will automatically get the opportunity to work with external USB 2.0 devices at the highest possible speed.

The situation is a little bit more complicated for mainboards and adapters using NEC 7200100AGM and VIA VT6202 chips. They feature considerably lower practical maximum speed and in some cases it may even tell on the performance of the external devices you are using. I am also talking about those cases when you are going to connect a really high-performance device to your USB 2.0 port, and then suddenly its performance gets limited by the bus bandwidth. If the device simply supports Hi-Speed USB, doesn’t boast any extreme performance and doesn’t require intensive data transfer, NEC 7200100AGM and VIA VT6202 will not cause any performance drops.

The slowest one in our comparison appeared the controller based on VIA VT6202 chip. Although I am pretty sure that the developer is not happy with this either. Actually, the new VT6212 chip should completely cure or at least partially eliminate the huge lag in the interface bandwidth. This could be really nice, however, we will be able to state that only after we actually test the product. So, check out our site for more info next week!